Good morning. It's Sunday, May 17th, and in this week's edition, we're covering why LA's coworking footprint just pushed past 8 million square feet while the broader office market stays stuck at 15.9% vacancy, the hot April CPI print that flipped markets from pricing rate cuts to pricing a hike by year-end, and a personal piece on the three-letter filter behind Pat Hiban's 90-minute workday. First time reading?
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A few weeks ago I wrote about the CRE deal pipeline app I've been building for my own acquisitions team. We now have 8 active beta users. Each one screens around 20 deals a week through the system and saves 7-8 hours per week on sourcing. A handful of properties are already moving to contract through the system (including mine).
Full transparency: this is still beta and there are bugs. May or may not work long term, but so far so good. It's improving fast - automatic saving and screening of deals straight from your inbox into the system - it looks like magic.
Right now we're burning more on tokens and developer salary than I want, and I need to get to 50-60 users to offset the cost and keep the developer on full-time.
If you want in, reply with one OM or property flyer. I'll send back a 14-day trial link to crepipeline.ai with that property already loaded. Try it out, hunt for more deals, and see if it makes sense for you.
Los Angeles keeps doubling down on coworking even as the broader office market stalls. The Real Deal reports the metro added 13 coworking locations in Q1, pushing inventory up 3.8% to nearly 8 million square feet across 351 sites - the largest footprint of any U.S. market. Coworking now accounts for 2.6% of all LA office inventory, while overall office vacancy sits stuck at 15.9%. Five operators (Regus, Premier Workspaces, Barrister, Industrious, and Spaces) control 35% of the city's supply, and monthly memberships have plateaued around $235 despite the new openings. Nationally, the latest 280-location wave concentrated in secondary markets like Philadelphia and Tampa - flexible space is moving where traditional tenants won't commit to long leases.
🔗 "I'm Buying an Apartment Complex Part 2": Ben Mallah flies his team to Tallahassee for a full due diligence walkthrough on a multi-family acquisition, uncovering major capital needs — rotting windows, corroded railings, and a fiber optic cable bored through the sewer line. He uses the findings to push for a steep price reduction and a fast close. Watch here
🔗 "How One Investor Turned a Single-Tenant Warehouse Into a 10-Unit Cash Flow Machine": Chris Thorndyke converted a neglected car wash into six micro retail suites, and is now renovating an adjacent warehouse to add four more units — leveraging trapped equity to nearly double his NOI to $100K+ without buying a new property. Watch here
Markets are now pricing in a Fed rate hike, not a cut. Following Tuesday's hotter-than-expected April CPI report, CNBC reports CME FedWatch now shows zero chance of a cut through end of 2027 and a 37% probability of a hike by year-end. Energy drove more than 40% of April's CPI gain (the hottest headline reading in nearly three years), and shelter posted its biggest monthly jump since September 2023 at 0.6%. The setup is an immediate problem for incoming Fed Chair Kevin Warsh, who has publicly favored cuts and takes the chair later this month.
CRE Impact: The refi window operators were modeling for late 2026 is closing. If inflation expectations keep drifting higher, debt costs aren't staying elevated - they're getting worse. Anyone underwriting on rate-cut math needs to stress-test a scenario where the next move is up, not down.
Pat Hiban sold a billion dollars of real estate as an agent. He ran a team that averaged 41 closings a month at its peak. He co-founded GoBundance, now roughly 1,400 paying members. He's a partner in DAPT Acquisitions, sitting on around 3,000 multifamily units.
He's 60. He works 90 minutes a day. Most of that is email.
I sat down with Pat last month on the Value Builder Podcast, and the part that stuck with me wasn't the volume or the door count. It was a three-letter screen Pat runs every new opportunity through. He got it from Joe Polish: ELF. Easy, Lucrative, Fun. If a deal, a business, or a partnership isn't all three, he doesn't touch it.
Here is how he learned it.
Around 2011, Pat wrote Six Steps to Seven Figures and hit the New York Times bestseller list.
He then tried to build two adjacent businesses. Rebus University, an online platform for agents. And a podcast for agents, Real Estate Rockstars.
Both eventually got sold for what Pat called "not a lot of money."
Here's the line that landed. Pat, on the podcast:
"I had a podcast studio in my garage and I'd open the door of the garage and go, I don't want to do this. I want to talk to another agent about sphere of influence and the same thing over and over again."
Advertisers paid pennies. He was filling a void, not building a business he loved.
Rebus and the podcast were not easy. Not lucrative. Not fun. By his own filter, both failed before they ever started.
Now compare that to GoBundance and DAPT. GoBundance started in 1997 as accountability calls between Pat and David Osborn at a Scottsdale conference. It stayed a friend group for over a decade before it ever became a business. Today it has 1,400 paying members, zero debt, all-organic growth (2026 is the first year they're spending on marketing). DAPT runs the same playbook with Andrew Kushman operating and Pat in a side seat. Both pass all three letters. Both compound.
The takeaway is the filter itself.
From now on, every deal, every partnership, every side conversation that wants to turn into a thing gets run through Easy, Lucrative, Fun before it gets a yes. If it's only two of the three, pass. If it's only one, it shouldn't even be on the calendar.
Pat is 60, working 90 minutes a day, and the businesses he still owns are the ones that pass all three letters. That isn't an accident.
Now I'm curious. What's the filter you actually use on new opportunities?
Hit reply. I read every one.
LET ME HEAR IT
Until next Sunday.
Be well,
Saul
P.S. Missed my podcast with Joe Fairless? Here is the full episode.
Videos & podcasts: I publish them weekly. Subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcast or Spotify.
Random Saul Fact: Chicagoland delivered amazing weather this weekend - got the bike out for a ride.
